Smith receives Google grant to investigate privacy issues

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – Adam Smith, associate professor of computer science and engineering in Penn State’s School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, has received a grant from Google to investigate privacy issues in a state-of-the-art training technique called deep learning. The grant, which is shared with Vitaly Shmatikov at Cornell, will support investigations into what deep learning systems can leak about sensitive inputs, as well as the development of a system for privacy-preserving deep learning. Google Faculty Research Awards support cutting-edge research in computer science, computer engineering and related fields. Approximately 200 grants are awarded globally each year. Smith and Shmatikov will share their results with relevant research groups at Google and have opportunities to collaborate with those groups, but all the products of the research will be publicly available.…